Humility and Convictions

Introduction

I appreciate John’s fine work this morning and selecting songs and leading those and your voices joined together in praise and honor of our great Father. The last two songs were exceptional, particularly here, O Israel, for some of what I want to do this morning. This idea of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, and as the psalm does in the second verse, talking about love your neighbor as yourself. It’s actually the key to understanding part of what Jesus is doing in the text we’re about to read in Mark chapters two and three. If you will turn to Mark chapter 2, verse 23, I want to read this story here, these two Sabbath encounters with Jesus and the Pharisees, and kind of work through these texts, and I’ll tell you in a moment what we’re going to do here this morning.

I’m going to do things a little bit differently and just kind of tell you where we’re going and maybe why here in just a moment. So Mark chapter 2, verse 23, it says, One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him.

And he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, Come here. And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. So this morning I want to spend some time, I’m just going to tell you where we’re going, talking about this story in Mark 2 and 3. And then I want to spend some time with some things that are a little bit more pertinent to our local work here and discussing some Lord’s Supper advers observance, kind of in connection to this idea. And this is something that I’ve really found multiple places I’ve lived. There’s always discussions about the Lord’s Supper and how it’s supposed to be done. And it’s important, just like the Sabbath is important. This is serious. And the accusations being made by the Pharisees are pretty serious to Jesus and his disciples.

And so I really want us to get to this point this morning where we see the need for humility in our interpretation and our convictions. Convictions are important. But in the end, we should be humble with those convictions, realizing that the goal is ultimately to seek and to find truth and to live truth, not merely live interpretations, not live extrapolations of the law. And so we need to spend some time talking about what’s going on here in Mark 2 and 3, and then maybe see how this fits into some things that we deal with in modern times, because as we know, the scriptures are timeless. The principles are there for us to gain from whether it’s the things happening now or the exact situations or context in the past, we can learn from them and gain.

And so that’s what I want us to do this morning. One of the first things I learned when I went to grad school, which was back in 2010 now, went through a few classes. In fact, they had this read this book by a German scholar. It’s very interesting, very short. But my professor had us read this book and come back to class the next day to talk about it. And the main point was that you don’t know as much as you think you know. Which was a humbling experience and a bit terrifying at first when you start getting into things and digging into scripture and realizing how many things you actually don’t know, that there’s so much to learn. But ultimately, it became more of a motivation to me to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep challenging things, to keep looking for answers, to keep looking to text and seeing what text says.

And since then, especially, I’ve really tried to focus on that. I don’t always do it right. There’s times some of you have corrected me or found fault, and that’s fine. That’s how things work. If the apostle Paul can be checked as he was in Acts 17, all of us are subject to that. But I think that’s an important lesson for us to gain is this idea of humility in our understanding. That there can be things that we miss or things that we don’t understand or things that we need to learn. And this is an ongoing lifelong process. And this is something that the Pharisees struggled greatly with.

You know, something happens that they don’t like or they don’t understand, and so immediately they begin making accusation. Immediately they begin complaining and saying that’s not right, that’s not lawful. And so it’s kind of this immediate reaction. And spoil alert, they’re wrong. it was not unlawful, and Jesus points this out. They were just wrong about it. And they needed some correction. Unfortunately, many of them, not all of them, some of we kind of paint the Pharisees with a broad brush sometimes. That’s not always the case. They have some leaders that were evil and corrupt. A lot of the Pharisees are probably really good people, trying to do what was right. And that’s often actually why we find them walking down roads with Jesus and his disciples, talking with them, interacting with them because they’re more like Jesus than, for example, the Sadducees or the priests, who were mostly corrupt and evil, and they were connected with Rome.

The Pharisees are people they are concerned with holiness. They’re concerned with righteousness. Paul says of the Jewish people, but probably, you know, in some ways, the Pharisees, as this is the interaction that’s going on, I think, to some degree, in the influence in Romans 10, they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. It’s not that they don’t have a zeal for God or that they don’t care about God or they just want to do things their own way. I don’t think that’s really the idea of what the Pharisees ultimately were. They were just a little bit mistaken about how this works. And Paul is trying to correct that. Jesus in this story is trying to correct that and help them see things in a way that is a little more accurate.

Sometimes they listened, sometimes they didn’t. And so we find throughout the stories of scripture that there’s times when many of them are converted, and many of them come to Jesus. Even the priests sometimes believed. And so this is a lengthy story in the Gospels and in the New Testament in which truth is being taught. It’s being received by some and being rejected by others. But here in this story, as they’re walking through the grain fields, the Pharisees are greatly offended. Now, let me be clear about this. I think it’s totally fine for them to ask questions. Say, is this awful? Is this right? And is it right that your disciples are doing this? Maybe they should be a little bit more careful about their accusations, but certainly, questions are good, and I think that’s an important thing for us to understand.

Questions are always good. And wondering whether or not this violates Sabbath law is an important question. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this is a serious matter. Sabbath is extremely important. The Pharisees know that. So here’s the Pharisee’s accusation, and we’re going to do some work in the Old Testament. Let me just tell the young people right now, this is not a sermon with four slides. That’s typically what I do. This is a sermon with like 21 slides, and we’re going to move quick because I got a lot of ground to cover. And so maybe just write the references down or the main ideas. I know that’s frustrating to some of you who want to write everything down. If that’s really important, I can send you the side slides later.

1. Doctrinal Claims Should Be Made Carefully and Humbly

But we’ve got a lot to do this morning, and we’re going to move pretty quickly through this to try to understand this text and sort of how this helps us now. So the Pharisees believed that as disciples were walking down this road through the grain fields and were plucking the heads of grain. They essentially equated this to harvesting. And thus their accusation, this is not lawful. You shouldn’t do this. Similarly, in the next story, they believe that what Jesus is doing is work. To heal on the Sabbath is work. And we’re going to look at some text in just a moment that contain the Sabbath law, because I want you to see that from the Old Testament. More than that, their motives, at least by the second story, have gotten to the point where they’re actually just seeking to accuse.

So let’s see where they get some of this idea from about the law, because it is important. It’s mentioned a handful of times throughout the Old Testament, probably less than you would think, in terms of a law format. Now, the Sabbath is referenced all over the place. But there are maybe four or five key passages in the Old Testament that talk about the Sabbath law itself. The first of those is they’re in the wilderness, and they just begin to do this idea of Sabbath, and he’s initiating this with Moses and the people, saying this is a solemn rest, this is a holy convocation, something that is set apart by God. And so as you’re getting the manna, you collect more. You probably remember this story from your Bible classes as a kid, those of you who had those.

You know, you collect twice as much, and then the next morning you have that, and you don’t have to go gather more. There were some who didn’t trust, right? And so they go out on the seventh day and there’s nothing. And God’s upset because they didn’t listen and they didn’t trust him. So that’s Exodus 16. The fourth commandment, you’ll remember, is about the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Pretty important. The fourth of the Ten Commandments is the idea of remembering the Sabbath. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. On it you shall do not do any work. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. It’s even connected to creation, right? To the creation itself, the idea of Sabbath is connected to that. And even more serious, violating Sabbath law is grounds for death. Right now, like any law, you’re you’re gonna have to make judgments based on how serious the infraction is, how much you know, did they actually do it? Are we sure? How sure are we? Right? But it’s grounds for death to violate Sabbath law. It’s a holy day that God has set aside, and so someone who profanes it shall be put to death. And there should not be any work done on it. So I do think we need to understand that the Pharisees’ concern with Sabbath is not unwarranted.

You know, it’s not like this is just not that big of a deal. And really, people can do it the way they want to do it. And these Pharisees just shouldn’t be worried about Sabbath. That’s not that’s not the issue here. Everyone knows, including Jesus and his disciples, that Sabbath is important, that it’s serious, that it is God mandated, God created, that He has set this apart as a holy day. Now let’s see what they did with this, because I think this is where we get into the problem with what’s happening here. Those are the laws. There’s a few other verses that go into some other details, and I may show some more of that here in a few minutes, but essentially, you saw the Sabbath law in the verses I put up there.

It’s relatively vague. It says not to do any work. there’s some passages later, you know, in Jeremiah it says not to carry a load or a burden, right? There’s there’s places like Exodus 34 that talk about not harvesting, which may connect to some of what the Pharisees are worried about here. But from that, from those relatively vague references about work, not working, not laboring, they extrapolated all of these rules and laws in the Mishnah, they are recorded. Now, they existed before that. The Mishnah is third century AD. But that’s coming from oral traditions that went back all the way to the fifth century BC, right? That finally kind of come into a written form. And this is the way that this is extrapolated, the interpretation of this laws, all the different rules, you know, you can only weave two threads together.

Weaving two threads together is violation, separating two threads, right? Sewing stitches, building a building, tearing a building down, kindling a fire, hitting with a hammer, taking objects from private domain to public domain. You know, they’ve made all of these rules. Now, what’s the goal of this? Why are they doing this? The motives are probably pretty good. We already said the Sabbath is really serious. Right? And they want to make sure they don’t violate the Sabbath. And so in doing that, they’ve come up with all these things that you can’t reap or thresh, or you can’t grind or sift or knead or bake. You can’t do any of these things on the Sabbath. Now, there’s some of those that are a little bit more clear than others.

For example, in Exodus 16, it tells them to bake the day before. So we can, they’re not supposed to be kindling fires, right? So there’s a couple references in some of these texts, but that’s really about it. All the rest of these they have extrapolated from their own mind as a way of interpreting statements like, don’t do any work. Okay? So I want us to be clear about that. They have categories. This is all, it’s in the Mishnah, the second part of the Mishnah about Shabbat, about Sabbath. And so they have come up with all of these things about how this is all supposed to work. Now, as we’re gonna see in a minute, Jesus responds to their accusation in a way that kind of points out some of the errors of their thinking.

But the ultimate statement there is at the end that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Now I want us to get from this what Jesus is saying is you’re missing the big picture. Right? So the first thing we need to understand here is that doctrinal claims should be made carefully and humbly. Number one, doctrinal claims should be made carefully and humbly. That’s the first thing I want us to get from this. Because the Pharisees don’t do that and they’re wrong. They’re completely wrong. They are arrogant. They stand up in the face of Jesus and his disciples and say, You’re not doing what’s lawful, and they’re incorrect about it. And they look a bit foolish in the process. The second part here is that in keeping my tradition or my interpretation, I better not miss the big picture of what’s going on.

2. I Better Not Miss the Big Picture

And this is essentially the direction through which Jesus is going to attack their accusation. So he’s going to come at them from this perspective that they’re really missing the whole point of Sabbath and the law itself, ultimately.

So here’s his response. He says, we’re going to come back to some of this about David here in just a moment, but he appeals to this story about David and Ahimelech in 1 Samuel 21. Right? So in this first encounter, and these are meant to be put together, that’s why Mark does it, right? We have the first story about them in the grain fields, the second story is in the synagogue, both are on the Sabbath. And in responding to this accusation in which they say it is not lawful what you’re doing, he says, What about David? No, it is not lawful for him to eat the show bread. Now it’s a really intriguing and interesting story. If you go back to 1 Samuel 21, David is running from Saul, he’s going from place to place.

And much like his disciples here, who are wandering, you know, around with him, and there’s really no resources, and they’re in need and they’re hungry and they’re eating, it tells us that David is in need. He and his men are at need and they are hungry. And so they go to Nod and they go into the priests there and say, Hey, we need some bread. The priests say there isn’t any. We don’t have any bread. The only bread we have is the showbread. And so we learn from the story, and we know from the law itself, that the showbread is changed every Sabbath. And so most likely Jesus is pulling the story from kind of a bigger picture of scripture and saying, hey, this happens on the Sabbath.

David and his men go in. And now, Ahimelech is not unconcerned with the law. I think that’s something we need to understand. He doesn’t just say, okay, that’s fine. Your men come in here, just eat the showbread, no big deal. Now, Ahimelech knows way more about the law than I do and you do. He’s a priest. He has a pretty good handle on what the law is and how it’s supposed to be kept. But what he does say is, are your men ceremonially clean or unclean? Right? I’m not giving them the showbread if they’re not clean. Now there’s a lot more detail to that we won’t go into this morning. But he’s making sure that they’re not going to come into the presence of God or take things that are that are of a holy nature when they are vulgar, right?

When they have been defiled in some way. Right? And this is from a ceremonial standpoint, not a moral standpoint. So he’s concerned that the law is being kept and that matters of law are being kept before he then just gives them the showbread. And then in Jesus’ response that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, the indication here, the inference that we pull from this is that Ahimelech is realizing that we have these two laws that we sing about. What are the greatest commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Now, here’s the interesting thing about this. Why would I say that Jesus is making an inference, or we make an inference that Jesus is talking about this text?

Leviticus 19 is where this is found. Leviticus 19 is a text that is about how you leave the edges of your fields for the poor and the sojourners to reap from those edges. And what they can do, they can’t go collect. Right? All they can do is eat to their fill and collect in their hands. They’re not allowed to take a basket, they can’t take it with them, right? And then he continues on about how you’re not to offend your neighbor, you’re not to treat them and oppress them. And then the final statement there is in verse 17 to love your neighbor as yourself. Completely in connection with what’s happening here in this text. The problem with the Pharisees, that Jesus points out numerous times, not just in this story, is they’re very devoted to the first commandment to love the Lord your God with your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, to the extent that they think they can do that while neglecting the second commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And Jesus says actually it’s the opposite. If you don’t love your neighbor as yourself, then you can’t keep the first commandment. And inspired writers after him make this same point. John says the same thing. How can you love God whom you don’t see when you don’t love your brother whom you do see? Right? Do we see the point? We have a Levite and a priest that walk by this person beaten and half dead on the street. The Samaritan stops. They’re too busy, they’ve got to get to their service or whatever it is. They need to stay ceremonially clean. All of these aspects. But what’s more important, Jesus says in that story, is that someone stops and helps this person. Now we understand this, I think, in a very simple way.

I mean, any of you, if you were coming to church this morning and you found a toddler on the side of the road wandering around with no one near, you probably would stop and help, right? And it’s not because you don’t care about assembly. It’s not because you don’t care about worship. It’s that we just we understand that when these principles come together to love your neighbor as yourself or to show care and concern for your fellow man. Now we’ve got two things in conflict, and we have to make a decision. And what does that decision look like? Right? This is essentially the sort of thing that Jesus is saying here to the Pharisees. You’re allowing your interpretation of this law to do harm rather than to do good.

Which is actually precisely what he says in the next story. When he comes into the synagogue and they’re watching him to accuse, and he says he uses their terminology again. Is it lawful? Is it lawful to do this? And notice that Jesus is now angry at the hardness of their heart. Because their interpretation of Sabbath law means they would rather a man with a withered hand not be healed so that work doesn’t happen. And in doing so, they have missed the big picture of what Sabbath and what the law is all about. To them, it’s about keeping all these rules and laws in their mind in an effort to stay in holiness with God, meanwhile neglecting the needs of the people around them. And what Jesus is trying to get them to see is that is corrupt thinking.

That is warped. That is not what the law, it’s not what Sabbath is actually about. So let me show you some other aspects of these Sabbath texts. We looked at the first part of some of these, and I purposely left the other part out because I want us to see this is where the content with the meat comes in for what’s happening here during the Sabbath. Yes, God says, don’t work. But actually, this is a blessing. It is a gift to them. Remember where they came from? They were slaves oppressed in Egypt who worked all the time. And so what God is doing here is saying, hey, six days of the week you’re going to work. The seventh day is a day of rest. Right? And yes, it connects to creation, but it also connects to the Exodus, to Egypt.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. The Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. It’s a remembrance of God’s blessing. Now think about it from our perspective. If you are doing well, right, are you do you want to work every single day? Yeah, I we would like to have days off. You know? And so this is kind of a unique thing that God is saying, six days you’re going to work, and the seventh day you do not work. And early on in the story, of course, God provides for them miraculously. You know, He’s giving the manna, they collect it’s there the next day, all that.

Of course, the situation changes later when the manna is no longer given, and now it’s just up to them to trust God, particularly when you get to the Sabbath year, where they do not sow and reap for the entire year. That’s a lot of trust. And unfortunately, it didn’t really happen very much, which is part of why they go into exile. And it’s part of why they’re there for 70 years, because he’s going to let the land rest for all the Sabbaths that they didn’t allow it to rest. And so it does become an issue of trust. Right? And part of what’s going on here is God helping them remember, to put it in a remembrance what he did for them, how he delivered them, how he’s given them rest.

Similarly, even when it’s tied to creation in Exodus 31, it’s a covenant. I mean, this covenant or this sign between God and man, that’s a blessing. I mean, that is a good thing. This is not just do it or you die. This is God is with you. He has made a promise to you. And he’s doing this because he created in seven days, in seven or six days, in the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed, and he’s offering this to you. This is what you’re going to do as his people. And so, as we appeal to doctrine carefully and humbly, part of this process is actually carefully thinking through scripture as well. I think maybe the most indictment that Jesus makes in this whole encounter is, have you never read?

You know, they have their rules and their laws and their extrapolations of the law and all of this, the things that essentially they’ve created, and so they’re offended by what these people are doing. And Jesus responds, this is not the only place he responds this way, actually, but Jesus responds is, Have you never read? Do you not know Scripture? Man, that had to be rough for the Pharisees who held themselves up as the arbiters of righteousness and truth and judgment based on the law. You know, they’re the ones writing all of these categories of law, the things that must be kept because they know the law so well, and all of this, and they have part of their group, which are scribes who are experts in the law, and yet Jesus is saying, Have you never read?

Have you never seen what Scripture says?

3. The Lord's Supper Is Important

And then he tells this story about David and the showbread. What I want us to understand here is that laws do not exist in a vacuum. That’s sort of what Jesus is telling them here. You’re taking this law and you’re extrapolating it out to all these things and you’re forgetting the context of everything. You’re missing the big picture of what Sabbath is actually all about. And in doing so, you’re actually bringing harm to people. These disciples that you won’t let eat. And this man with a withered hand that you think shouldn’t be healed. Because you haven’t carefully looked at scripture. Alright, so let me transition here and say, similarly, the Lord’s Supper is important. It’s important that we do it right. And that we’re careful to see what God has said, particularly what God has said in Scripture.

And throughout my life, I’m just going to throw up some things here that we have dealt with or controversies I’ve seen within various churches I’ve been a part of. What about this one? Can we take it twice on Sunday? You know, how often should we take it? Maybe the question that others would ask. Is it okay to say that the bread and the cup? You might think, I can’t believe anybody would question this, but I’ll tell you they do. Is it okay that the bread and the cup represent Jesus, body and blood? Or do we have to say, This is my body and blood? And you can read the rest of those. We’ll talk more about some of them here in just a moment, but I’ll tell you, every single one of those is a legitimate question or controversy that has been made about the Lord’s Supper.

Some of them are more serious than others. Some of them are really not important at all. Can we call that the Eucharist in Greek? The word Eucharisteo is right in the text. It means giving thanks. Now we respond to that because we want to make sure we’re not Catholic. And that’s sort of how some of these things are. That’s why we’re worried about some of these things or phrases or actions or whatever. And you know, there’s ways we can do that, and we do things a certain way here, and I think it works. If I didn’t, I would have said something about it a lot sooner. But there’s lots of different ways people think through this, and I want to show you why here in just a minute.

Not because of opinions, not because of tradition or what people think, but I want us to actually look at the text and see what the texts say. Because I want us to come back to this idea. Whatever I believe or my convictions, I need to hold them humbly. I need to make sure that I have carefully considered scripture, and that if I find that I’ve been inaccurate, I’m willing to adjust.

When we’re looking to scripture, there may be things we’ve missed. There may be big picture items that we haven’t considered in all of this. Do you think the Pharisees thought that they were wrong about the Sabbath? And yet Jesus says, What about David? Have they ever thought about David before? And eating the showbread in connection to what they’re complaining about these disciples, and then taking the grains and eating them as they’re walking by the way. Sometimes there’s just things we haven’t thought about. Alright, this is going to get a little bit dizzling, but that’s okay. You’re welcome to open your Bible and turn to these texts if you want to work through them. I realize it’s to some degree a little bit small, but I want to put these parallel passages up here so that we can look through them and make some observations.

So we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 1 Corinthians 11. Familiar with those because those are the texts we often go to talk about the Lord’s Supper before we partake. And what I’ve done here is I highlighted a number of things to try to make them a little bit more clear as we work through them. And so I’m just going to kind of go one by one here as I work through this. The first of these, and the question, which we’ll come back to somebody’s questions in just a moment, why is it happening the way it’s happening? And why is it being recorded the way it’s being recorded? Matthew and Mark tell us that they do this during a meal. It’s as they were eating. So as they’re eating a meal, Jesus takes the bread and he blesses it and he breaks it.

Alright, so this is part of this whole process. In Luke’s account, actually, it’s different. The first thing he does in Luke’s account in Luke 22 is he took a cup. And he blesses the cup. He gives thanks for the cup. He takes it and then he divides it. Now, one thing that’s interesting to me in this text, and one of the things that we’ve actually been working on in our Isaiah class is to learn to make good observations and to work through those observations and figure out which of those matter and which of those don’t? And that can be complex. There’s a lot of ways you have to learn to do that. I’ve actually been working on sermons on interpretation and authority for quite a while, and I felt like we’ll just talk about this morning, as a kind of an example of some of this.

But notice in every single text. Now, this isn’t always the case for everything. In every single text, Jesus prays for the bread and then he breaks it. That was one of the items on the list on the previous slide. You may not know this. You may, I don’t know. But there are people who think you cannot take the Lord’s Supper unless you pray for it first and then break the bread. And they’re very adamant about that. It’s one of those things that’s in every single text. I will say that. Now, there’s some other factors that we could get into with that, but right now I’m just pointing out, I’m observing, making some observations, all right. In 1 Corinthians 11, which is the first account written. So 1 Corinthians would have been written about 52 to 54 AD.

The Gospels were not written until 70 AD or later. Right? So 20 years before the Gospels are written. Paul writes 1 Corinthians 11. There’s no prayer after the cup. Only one prayer. Now you may say it says in the same way, likewise, after he took the cup, after supper, saying that maybe that likewise is a prayer. If so, there are three prayers in Luke. Because he says a prayer for the cup, and then he says a prayer for the bread, and then he says, and likewise the cup after they had eaten. Now that phrase after they had eaten or after supper also means it’s a meal. It’s the word depnon, which is the Greek word for a meal. This is a meal they’re eating. One of those is in 1 Corinthians 11.

So the problem in 1 Corinthians 11 actually is not that it’s a meal, it’s how they’re doing the meal. And if we read the text carefully, it’s that they’re not waiting for each other. They’re honoring themselves rather than honoring Jesus. Right? That’s the actual problem in 1 Corinthians 11, but it is in the midst of a meal. And then notice in Matthew and Mark, after these accounts, they take the Lord’s Supper, or he initiates it, they sing a hymn. I mean, we know they did that. So my question is, do we do it like they did it?

My suggestion is that we act humbly about our interpretations of this text. Before we complain, before we go to the elders with a spirit of complaint and grumbling, we make sure we’ve read these texts carefully to make sure we’re actually searching for truth and not just our extrapolations of law. Now, I think there’s a lot of sensible reasons to do things the way we do them. There’s a lot of wisdom. And so a lot of times we say, what is wise? That’s what we really should be saying most of the time. What is wise? Not is it scriptural, is it unscriptural? Of course, we don’t want to be unscriptural, but we want to be wise in what we do. Right? And so there’s a lot of things I can say about this text.

Certainly, it makes a lot of sense that you have two items. You have the bread and you have the cup or the fruit of the vine, that are significant here. And at least in some of the accounts, we’re told that Jesus gave thanks for both. Great. That seems like a really wise thing. But it’s not in all of them. And here’s my thought about this. If a formal ritual, if a formula is really what they’re after here in these texts, it’s a little bit confusing why they wrote it all the way they did. If it’s really about ceremony and making sure we do every item in a precise order and do it precisely right, why is Luke have a different order than Matthew and Mark? Maybe if our concern is there, and I’m not saying they’re bad questions, or we should never discuss those questions, actually, the idea is we should enter into dialogue, which is what I’m trying to do this morning.

We should study it further. We should, before we get offended or upset, we should just study and see what the text says. And then work through that to see what is the most wise thing, what is the best decision we can make? How are they doing it? Why are they doing it that way? What is the context? What cultural influences are? Maybe they’re breaking the bread because you got to break the bread at some point, and that’s the way it comes, and he prays, and then he does it. Maybe there’s no significance to it at all. However, the breaking of the bread seems important in the text too, because it’s about Jesus breaking his body and sacrifice. So which of these things are important? And if it’s formulaic, if it’s ceremonial, if it’s a ritual, I would suggest we need to go back to the drawing board and think about how we do it.

4. The Big Picture of the Lord's Supper

Because there’s a number of things in the text that we do not do. Now, maybe it is that it’s the big picture that we should be seeing here. And that is that what Jesus is doing and what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 11 is saying, here’s the point. I want you to remember, I want there to be a memorial of my sacrifice, my breaking of my body. This is a new covenant. Big things are happening. They’ve been talking about all throughout the Old Testament. This is a new covenant in my blood, and I’m going to restore the kingdom. Do you notice in three of those texts he talks about the kingdom of God? That he’s going to do this new in the kingdom of God or my Father’s kingdom.

So kingdoms are actually pretty important here. These are the big picture items of what’s happening in this text. That it’s for remembrance, that it’s a covenant. That it’s about the restoring or the bringing back of God’s kingdom and God being with this people and a communion to remember that as often as we take it. And Paul summarizes it well. He says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. And we’re to take it worthily.

And I didn’t even get into all the other things. I mean, there’s so many things there. We should have periods of silence, or we should pass trays again, or we should, those are all opinions. It’s all opinion, it’s all preference. But you know one of the big picture things about the Lord’s Supper is that we are God’s people together in harmony. Just my opinion, does my preference, and trust me, I have them, is it disrupting the harmony of God’s people as we partake? Am I more concerned with formality than I am content? Because I’ll tell you, there’s been times where I’ve heard Lord’s Supper talks where Jesus is hardly mentioned, and I’ve heard prayers where the bread and the cup are not even mentioned. Are we okay with that?

Because it’s the right format. I just want us to think. I want us to think about what the text actually says. And the spirit that we come to the text with, and the spirit that we come to our practice with. Now, here we do it a certain way, and many other places do it a certain way too. But you know that’s changed over time. When I was younger, and some of you who are older than me, you remember this way before my time too. You know, it used to be that you came and there was trays, someone got up, they said a prayer, they started passing the trace. No comments. Very few comments, at least. You remember when that was introduced, anyone? People started coming up and making comments and how people felt about that.

And people just have their different opinions on how all this should work. But opinion is the big thing here. And am I allowing my extrapolations, my opinions to interfere with the most important items, the big picture of what’s going on here? And so I humbly submit that to you this morning. Have we thought carefully? Are my convictions really based on what Scripture says when I analyze Scripture? Or is it just my interpretation or my opinion of something that I can’t prove that I want to make a big deal about and cause contention? Questions are good. Study is good. But my warning is to be careful about a spirit, a spirit of opposition, a spirit of complaint, a spirit of grumbling, a spirit of arrogance.

And that we come to text sincerely and honestly looking for truth. Even if it goes against the things I’ve thought before. Even if I realize, hey, the way I’ve presented that in the past is inaccurate. And I’ll tell you, that’s happened to me many times. It’s just part of life. Has my attitude been wrong? I’ll tell you what, I’ve had that before too. It’s just part of the things that we struggle with as humans. I hope I haven’t offended anybody this morning. Not really my goal. But if I did, I would ask you to look to Scripture. That’s the answer. Analyze the text. And I’m more than happy to talk to anybody about the text and what it says. That’s the way it should be.

Conclusion

And talking so much about the Lord’s Supper this morning, our minds are sort of directed toward that reality of what Jesus has done, his sacrifice, his willingness to die for us. And in just a few minutes, we’re going to observe the Lord’s Supper, what we’ve been talking about a lot this morning. And I would suggest whether you like the song we sing or you like the talk that’s made, or the words of the prayer that are offered, you can examine yourself. You can think about the body, and you can think about his body, and you can think about what’s what’s been done. You don’t even need a moment of silence to do it. You can do it while we sing, and you can do it while someone speaks.

There’s all sorts of ways this can happen, whether it’s your preference or not. Don’t lose sight of what matters most. And if you’re not in Jesus Christ this morning, we’d love to fix that. We’d love to take you right now and baptize you into Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins so you can be a part of this new covenant in his blood and be a part of his kingdom. And you can experience the rest and the joy and the refreshment and the restoration of what it means to be one of God’s people. Can we help you with that this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing together.